Today at The Comics Journal, it's time for another dive into the world of comics and fine art--via Marc Bell and Michael Dooley. Besides the living expenses thing, there's a bit of history to go around:
BELL: Yeah, I think so. It was pretty exciting when Kramers 4 was happening cause it seemed like a lot of these things were connecting up.
DOOLEY: “Connecting up,” how do you mean?
BELL: Maybe just for me, well from my point of view … Wait, let me just think about this for a minute. In the ’90s, comics were mainly about stories, but then all this other crazy stuff sort of started to come in. Fort Thunder came along and sort of changed things a bit. Their comics were more eyeball-y and crazy and fantastic than what had been happening. It was a different thing that was still somehow tied to genre.
DOOLEY: Well, their idea of narrative and the comics medium, in general, was more open-ended than what had come before. Would that …
BELL: Maybe open-ended but … Ah, I don’t know. Scratch that. I don’t know what I’m talking about. I’m not a comic historian. I’ll leave that for the academics on The Comics Journal, right?
And that's not all--today's review comes courtesy of Tegan O'Neil, who found a lot in Peow's latest Al Gofa graphic novel to talk about:
If you like extensive crosshatching merely for the sake of crosshatching, you will find much to pore over in these pages. One of the book’s strengths is the way it weaves in and out of multiple approaches to action storytelling. Although the overall mood is definitely European – and you can see the Moebius in every long shot where Gofa uses delicate stippling to indicate scale – there are specific instances throughout where he also uses cutaways like American artists would use splash pages. He even swipes a few poses just for effect (either I’m losing my mind or that’s a Wild Thing Nikki Doyle swipe in there, although the former is a definite probably given a long enough time frame). Some of the character designs seem straight out of Morrison & Case’s Doom Patrol, others Tim Vigil. The variety works.
In a repeat of a story from last week, The New York Times is at it again: spoiling super-hero comics before they're released. After months of build up and shenanigans (in the form of the one-shot, mini-series, prequel and variant covers) to this week's release of Batman #50--where Batman and Catwoman are getting married--the Grey Lady recapped the entire issue, along with images and everything, all before it hit the stands. There's a few different perspectives coming out of this one--there's retailers who feel they've been screwed over by a giant build up that they financially supported, only to have the rug pulled out from under them at the finish line, while there's also retailers who feel like this kind of press--a print article about the plot of a super-her comic book in the Sunday NY Times--is exactly the kind of "mainstream" support that has been promised, but never provided. Then, there's the readers who, anecdotally as it may be, are disappointed to have a story they've been invested in for months spoiled prior to publication. (It would be interesting to know if there's DC employees working on the soon to be released and by all accounts disappointing DC Universe streaming service who feel like a spot in the NY Times might have been better utilized to promote something with a little more fiscal importance than a single issue of Batman.)
The history of The Comics Journal includes a lot of articles and asides about the downfall of super-hero comics, which is always right around the corner, you'll see, just you wait, we're sure this time, but the two companies have always proven those naysayers wrong. This isn't one of those asides, but I will admit: I'm curious. I'm curious as to why the New York Times is choosing to repeatedly publish article length recaps of super-hero comic books that wouldn't be out of place on any number of super-hero comic focused websites, I'm curious as to whether these sorts of marketing ploys are having a genuine impact on sales, and I'm curious about whether that particular part of the industry has any tricks left that don't look the same as the bait-and-switch ones they used when I was a teenager. I'm curious in a way that I haven't been curious about the content of those comics in a very long time. I'm like a guy with a thorn in his paw: I know I could take it out, but then what would I stick into my eye?
